


Promises to Keep

by Sassaphrass



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Asexual Character, Asexuality Spectrum, Body Dysphoria, Canon Level Incest, Character Study, Depression, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Internalized Acephobia, Long-Term Isolation, Luther Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Luther is a Big Mess, Mental Health Issues, Sad, Social Anxiety, Suicidal Thoughts, Unreliable Narrator, Victim Blaming, anger management issues, oh wait...how could i forget
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 12:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19812535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassaphrass/pseuds/Sassaphrass
Summary: The question isn't why they left, it's why he stayed. It's Luther's fault he turned out this way, and no one else's.He really is trying to be better.





	Promises to Keep

**Author's Note:**

> So BIG WARNING for depression, thoughts of self harm, messed up thought processes surrounding Asexuality, messed thought processes surrounding isolation and abuse, Luther's own general jackassery, and some emotional incest between Allison and Luther (they don't do anything but... well)

Luther hadn’t quite felt properly put together in a long time. He’s had the nagging sense for the last fifteen odd years that who he was on the inside was wrong. It used to be that the physical had been where he felt in control. His body had been the only thing about himself that he’d really felt comfortable with. And then he’d gotten hurt and that had been out the window too.

Now nothing about him felt right.

He’d never really been good with people, but whatever his particular...social miscalibration was it hadn’t really started to feel obvious until Five left.

Everyone else was so unhappy and Luther wasn’t and he didn’t know if they were wrong or he was. He had never understood how they all had so much trouble with Dad. It was easy to make him happy, just so long as you listened and followed the rules he’d be happy with you. He wouldn’t ever say it, but he might nod approvingly or put his hand on you shoulder, and he wouldn’t make you practice. All you had to do was listen to him and then everything was fine.

_(In retrospect, everything wasn’t fine.)_

Five had been the first to go, and he had proved to everyone that it was possible. After all, he’d just walked out the door one morning and never come back.

Soon, it was all any of his siblings thought about- the way they’d make their escape one day.

Everyone else wanted things they couldn’t get at home and Luther hadn’t ever really considered that his life would have to change from what it always had been, he hadn’t been bothered by that either.

They want love or the chance of it, and freedom and they have dreams they think they can find.

Luther didn’t understand that. Not like Allison who reads magazines about movie stars and styles her hair and asks him “You think I’m pretty right?”

Of course Luther thinks she’s pretty. He thinks she’s the best thing in the whole wide world and if he could just stay here with her forever that would be perfect.

She doesn’t want to stay here though. Just like everyone else. She wanted to leave and kiss a boy (preferably one that was not also her brother).

Allison wants to be a movie star. She wants to be an artist and a storyteller and the sort of girl people recognized when she walks down the street. She wantx to go to Hollywood and make the whole world fall in love with her. She whispered that to him one night when they were tucked close together the blanket over their heads.

Despite what, it turns out, _all_ of their siblings think Luther doesn’t kiss her. Maybe he should have, but it honestly hadn’t really occurred to him. He’s never considered kissing someone except in the most abstract sense and it’s never really been a thought that preoccupies him. Besides, Allison wanted to be normal, and wanting to kiss your brothers wasn’t normal. It was like Diego’s anger, or Klaus’ desperation, or Vanya’s distant untouchable sadness. It was who they were but it also wasn’t, it was something that had happened because things were hard sometimes and loneliness had a way of eating you alive.

He had started to feel sort of...cracked and out of place by then. Not in step with the rest of the family when his entire job was to be in step with everyone. That was what leaders did and he- He was Number One. He _had_ to be the leader.

He might want to sit with Allison in that fort and drink pop and let her teach him how to dance but- he also wanted to help people and save the world and make Dad proud and he couldn’t do both. She never once suggests that he could come with her and learn to be a stunt man or a grip or whatever else people who weren’t actors did in Hollywood. It’s probably for the best, because he doesn’t think he ever could have agreed to go.

Klaus wants to kiss boys, or maybe girls too, the specifics were unclear to Luther and became impossible to parse once Klaus stopped being sober which was increasingly frequently. Or maybe he just wants his powers to go away so he won’t have to look at dead people anymore.

It turns out, in the end, that what Klaus really wants is to be high.

Even after he left, allegedly for good, he’d turn up, stealing things or asking for money. Luther always gave him money, even though Pogo had gently suggested it was hurting more than helping. One afternoon Diego showed up and shouted that he was a being an asshole and told him not to do it again. He doesn’t give Klaus the money next time, and then Klaus stops showing up.

Diego doesn’t talk to him after that either.

It doesn’t occur to Luther that he’s missing out staying at home. Dad needs him, and he’d feel too bad leaving Pogo and Mom to deal with his moods on their own when Luther was the one who was best at dealing with Dad when he got like that.

His siblings know what they want. They’re chasing dreams. Luther doesn’t have dreams. Nothing that survived childhood, except maybe the root of that ridiculous nickname: Spaceboy. He’d like to have been an astronaut and go see the stars but that wasn’t what astronauts did anymore, they were scientists and did experiments on the International Space Station and Luther wasn’t smart enough to be the best of the best kind of scientist that went into space.

Diego goes to the Police Academy (stupid idea) and falls in love (better idea). It doesn’t improve his attitude towards Luther or Dad but he seems happy when he sneaks in to talk to Mom.

He and Luther pretend they don’t see each other, when their paths cross. All they ever do is fight anymore. Luther blames puberty. Diego blames Luther’s blind devotion to the cause and to Dad and calls him a mindless soldier who wouldn’t know what to do without orders (which considering Mom was his favourite person and she literally couldn’t live without orders was pretty rich).

The thing is, Luther doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he wants or who he should be or what’s right or what’s wrong. He’s good at reading and remembering but he just...he can’t figure it out for himself. It’s easier not to choose. It makes sense as well. Dad needs him. He’s the only one left and there isn’t time for wishing and hoping and if he sees less and less of everyone until Diego is nothing more than a name that is occasionally announced as a contender in local boxing matches, and Klaus is someone he sees less and less who he bails out and picks up and is ignored by, and Allison is just a more and more distant voice on the other end of the country and the other end of the phone, and Vanya isn’t anything at all to him until she writes that book which says horrible horrible things about everybody he’s ever cared about, well...Life’s not fair, is it? You can’t have everything.

And, hey, sometimes dreams do come true: he gets to go to the moon after all, in the end.

Luther isn’t stupid, despite what everyone else thinks. He’s good with data. Not brilliant, like Five, but he’s wired for science. Math, physics and chemistry are all just new languages to him and they’re all easier to understand than the languages that use words instead of numbers to describe the world.

He likes to be prepared. He likes to consult the data before he comes to conclusions about things.

He knew what the effects of long term extreme isolation could be.

_(increased risk of: mental illness, need for medical intervention in cases where mental illness is already present, self harm ranging from scratching and bruising to self amputation, psychosis, unstable moods, sensory overload...etc etc)_

He knows about that. He took measures to ensure his safety. Routine, Productive Activities, A level of careful self-supervision and monitoring. He couldn’t afford to be off his game, not with the world depending on him.

_(And besides not everyone is wired to suffer in solitude. Some people preferred to be alone, hermits existed after all and some of them gave all indication of being perfectly happy thank you very much)_

Except, when he gets home he’s not in control. He’s not logical, he doesn’t consult the data before drawing conclusions. He does the wrong things. 

_(And not just in the usual way he does the wrong thing, where he’s trying his best and everyone looks at him like- well, like he’s from outer space and he’s not quite sure what he’s done wrong until later when he picks it all apart in his own mind)_

He does things that he knows are wrong as he does them, or immediately after or sometimes he’ll know something is the wrong choice before he’s even moved and then he’ll do it anyway and as his fist is flying through the air he’ll wonder “what the fuck is wrong with me?”

It’s worse than he thought, being home. The steady clockwork of activity, research and routine that’s kept him ticking along for the last four years has wound down.

In some ways that’s good. He no longer has his morning thought of leaping into the dark and trying to clear the moon’s thin atmosphere. He doesn’t usually idly consider smashing his head or his hand with a rock as hard as he can anymore, either.

In some way’s it’s worse. Those had just been thoughts, after all, without any momentum behind them, neither upsetting nor tempting, just an option he had in the same way that he had the option of trying heroin and joining Klaus in rehab.

_(Throwing his body clear of the moon’s gravity had always been a more tempting option though, he couldn’t think of a cleaner suicide. No mess at all for someone else to clean up.)_

Now he catches himself doing things without even realizing, without any conscious thought behind it at all. He rips at his fur where it escapes between his sleeve and his gloves or he punches himself in the arm when he’s trying to make himself focus. He only realizes what he’s doing as he’s doing it. Sometimes he doesn’t even notice until after when he starts getting a bald patch, or notices the bruises. 

Time slips away sometimes too. He used to always keep busy- now? He might find he’s done nothing all day but lie in bed and reread outdated disproven science. He’s ashamed of being so lazy, but he can’t seem to find the will to do anything else so he just...doesn’t.

He’s never had friends. He doesn’t have Dad to talk to anymore, or his messages or even the idea of the man to cling to.

( _Long term solitary confinement is categorized as a form of torture and Dad put him through that for no damn reason at all)._

The only sibling who’s not disgusted with him is Five- though it might be because Luther never tries to curb Five’s own more questionable behaviour. They’re drinking buddies, after all.

Five seems to understand wanting to be around people while simultaneously not being able to stand being around people. Five went through the same sort of thing isolation Luther did after all, only more of it and worse.

_(What right did he have to complain? He’s just a monster these days.)_

Five puts a hand on his forearm and it’s only the fact that it’s Five and Five killed dozens and dozens of innocent people just because, and so is the only one who doesn’t judge Luther that keeps Luther from shaking him off.

“Let’s toast to the living.” He slurs, and Luther quirks one corner of his mouth up and taps his glass against

“Toast to the dead.” He offers.

Five hums and starts drinking fast. Luther stares at nothing and opens his mouth before he can think. “Do you ever feel like nothing is worth doing anymore?”

“Mrpf?” Five is leaning heavily on his hand and tilting pretty far to the right. Luther reaches over and rebalances him. Five doesn’t try to stab him for his trouble, or say anything cutting, which is a sure sign that he’s well on his way to black out drunk. Five, unlike Luther who is a mean drunk, only gets sweet when he’s too drunk to stand. 

“We’re not along anymore.” Five mutters. He leans to the right this time and ends up resting against Luther’s arm. It makes his skin crawl a little, but it’s also proof that to Five at least, he’s not beyond redemption.

Luther is still staring at nothing. He’s not actually drunk yet. Five has a pretty good head start on him. He wishes he could blame the way he feels on the booze, but he can’t.

He carries Five up to his room when he passes out, still covered in equations to save the world, and tucks him in to bed. Recovery position, of course, he’s not stupid. He puts a bucket by his bed and then sits with a finger on his pulse counting the beats to be sure it’s not too slow.

He goes up to the attic and sits with his legs dangling out the open window. He looks up at the moon and thinks about those moments when it had turned to white glass and he’d felt like he was exactly where he belonged.

He hadn’t felt too big on the moon, or too awkward or too...horrible. There was no one to compare himself to, no one to fail or disappoint.

He wipes at his eyes, and misses Pogo, and he misses his Dad and the way he’d felt when he’d been a different, objectively worse, person.

Luther punches his leg and wishes he had someone else to blame for the person he grew up to be. But, he doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I just headcanon Luther as being pretty Ace and pretty depressed at the same time. Not that it justifies his behaviour, just that...I don't know that sceen with him alone in the house in flashback hits me where I live, I guess. Also, I really read Allison and Luther's relationship as being another symptom of how messed up their childhood was, but that's just me. 
> 
> Also, I read the wikipedia for Solitary Confinement and Luther's behaviour literally ticks almost all of the boxes for the long term effects that it can have on people, which really surprised me, so I worked that it. Anyway. If you have some thoughts let me know...


End file.
